The Planetary Science Institute (PSI) is a research institute based in Tucson, Arizona, focusing on planetary science. Founded in 1972 on a non-profit basis, it is involved in many NASA missions, the study of Mars, asteroids, comets, interplanetary dust, the formation of the Solar System, extrasolar planets, the origin of life, and other scientific topics. It is now actively participating in the Dawn mission, scheduled to explore Vesta between 2011 and 2012, and Ceres in 2015. PSI manages the spacecraft's Gamma-Ray and Neutron Detector, which will map the surfaces of the two minor planets to determine how they were formed and evolved. The Institute's orbit@home is a distributed computing project through which the public can help in the search for near-Earth objects. The Institute is also involved in science education through school programs, popular science books and art. Its scientific Staff are distributed in 16 US states and in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Russia and Australia. Its present director (2009) is Dr. Mark V. Sykes.

Website
http://www.psi.edu/
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Science_Institute

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Small satellite may shape centaur rings

The unique two thin rings around the Centaur Chariklo could be shaped by an even smaller satellite. Chariklo is a Centaur, which are small bodies similar to asteroids in size but to comets in composition, that revolve around ...

Surface of Saturnian moon Enceladus shields buried organics

The Saturnian moon Enceladus presents a unique opportunity in our solar system to search for evidence of life, given its habitable ocean and plume that deposits organic-bearing ocean material onto the surface.

NASA's EMIT instrument maps global airborne mineral dust

NASA'S EMIT mission, placed on the International Space Station to learn how dust storms on Earth warm or cool the planet, has created the first complete maps of the world's dust source regions, providing precise locations ...

New study finds lunar swirls linked to topography

Lunar swirls have been traditionally considered to be unaffected by topographic changes, but a new study shows a correlation between the two. Lunar swirls are high-albedo markings on the moon that occur in both mareā€”dark, ...

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